Looking for a waitressing, bartending or other food/beverage/hospitality type job in South Florida? If so, I’d like to say how sorry I am about that, for a variety of reasons, not least of which is job posts like this one. Hope you’re feeling extra hospitable!

HI, YOU ARE CREEP, ALSO I DO NOT HAVE PANTIES WITH HEALING PROPERTIES! BUT IF YOU FIND SOME LET ME KNOW BECAUSE I BET THE ARMY WOULD WANT TO KNOW ABOUT IT, THEY LOVE WEIRD TECH STUFF LIKE THAT, DID YOU SEE THE ROBOTS THEY MADE TO TEST ARMOR THEY WERE REAL CREEPY JUST LIKE YOU! ALSO I AM UNSURE HOW I WOULD “WEAR” FUN BUT SOMETHING TELLS ME IT WOULD BE BOTH PHYSICALLY AND EMOTIONALLY UNCOMFORTABLE AND WOULD LIKELY LEAVE MARKS ON MY BODY AND ALSO ON MY SOUL. LET’S GET STARTED!

One thing about which you were not wrong, job poster: This is some serious cry-teria. Ho-oh! Hey-ey! HOLLA! RIMSHOT, BOOM, MIC DROP, SEACREST OUT.

But the pay ain’t (too) bad! Which puts you above 97% of ATJ posts. That said: there are many, many, MANY moist and musty recesses of the internet for you to post jobs that require Silkwood showers at the end of the day just to hose off the sticky, fragrant combination of massage oil, pine-sol and regret. Alas, the Food/Beverage/Hospitality job category is not one of them. But best of luck to you in your noble and chivalrous quest, please just move it on over to the appropriate channels, as your average job-seeker is going to want to Avoid This Job.

(Many thanks to our submitter Ayesha! And don’t forget, you can submit a job too.)

Today’s lesson is a hard one. And like all hard lessons, it shall neither be the first, nor the last time you hear it. But here we go again.

ATTENTION PEOPLE OF THE WORLD. It’s time to get real. Look, there are any number of magical, mythical things that we all wish existed, OK?

Unicorns. Fucking UNICORNS, you guys. How do they work? Unicorns speak to many demographics: they are pretty (yay!), but they also have a lethal weapon strapped to their heads (awesome.) Their powerful and majestic horn has healing powers (snicker) and they loooove virgins (double snicker.) The point is this: unicorns are marvelous. You may marvel at them! But you will not see them. Why? Because they don’t exist.

Fountain of Youth. A real one, not a series of injections that makes your face look like it’s made of flesh-colored mylar balloons and the wax that goes around Bonbel cheese. No, a real fountain of youth, so we could all run around LOOKING like we did at 18, but mercifully not thinking, speaking, or acting like it.

(And thank God, because if you’ve done it, you know that reading your own teenage writing as an adult is the emotional equivalent of waterboarding yourself. In 10 years or so, when today’s teenagers go back and can actually see & hear their younger selves via YouTube/Facebook/cell phone footage, it will be a miracle if any of them survive it. The mass seppuku that will occur may actually be mankind’s extinction event.)

ANYWAY. The POINT BEING: there is obviously nothing as hideous as the musings of a teenager, but we will take their shiny hair and unwrinkled brows. We will happily strip the youthful sparkle from their eyeballs and force it in our own sad, ancient eye sockets. Yes please. We will, or rather we WOULD, but the fountain of youth doesn’t exist.

Other things that do not exist: magic, faeries, Bigfoot, flattering snapshots taken from a low angle, the Tooth Fairy, privacy on the internet, leprechauns… you get the idea. Right? Right. Some things cannot, WILL not, exist. No matter how much we want them to. Which brings us to this:

Not a thing.

Not possible.

DOES NOT EXIST.

No matter how many times we revisit this topic, like a phoenix rising from the ashes (ALSO NOT A REAL THING), it refuses to die, instead being born again and again, sheathing its bold lies in the fine silken robes and matted furs of a rock star.

There’s no better way to introduce this “job” than through the words of our submitter, R.K., when asked if he/she had anything else to say about this ad:

“Just, what the hell is she talking about?”

What indeed, Mister or Miss R.K. What indeed.

Oh, hello Natalie. Hey, quick question for you, when you have a second… WHAT IN THE HOLY HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! Every sentence of this job post is like its own tiny Rubik’s Cube. Only significantly less colorful, and made of stupidity instead of plastic.

With the national unemployment rate hovering around 10%, these days employers don’t need to seek out applicants; they can just sit back and wait for the job-seekers to come to them. Spend time writing up a cogent, comprehensible job post? Eh, who needs it. Just have that feral cat who lives in the dumpster walk all over a keyboard. Those things look like words, right? Sure. Somebody clean the paw marks off the keyboard, then add in a couple lines stressing that the job itself offers zero benefits and minimal pay. Push a button and throw it into the black maw of the craigslist job boards…. and voila! An avalanche of resumes, perfumed with the sweet scent of desperation and a ripe hint of unused master’s degrees rotting in the background.

Point being…? We get it, employers: you are the belle of the recession ball! You’ve made yourselves a glorious frock from the tattered dream-curtains of unemployed Americans! Your dance card is full! And yeah, you don’t NEED to try. Your job listings don’t NEED to be helpful, or succinct, or informative….AND YET… Please. Just proofread. Spell check. Pretend for one moment you care about this even 1/100th as much the job-seekers do. Is that too much to ask?

…Oh. OK.

Just… come ON. Come on. There are only three words in the title of your job post. And yet you have managed somehow to make a TYPEWRITTEN SENTENCE illegible. It’s almost impressive. Almost.

To be fair, the bar IS set lower for craigslist ads. And far lower for what is essentially a casting call for body parts (“Wanted: Shapely Buttocks” would probably have sufficed here.) But still. A modicum of care, the teensiest indication that someone wrote this while sober… or even awake! I mean, you’re still professionals, right?

Exactly! We all need to be doing professional, you guys. Seriously. Now, suppose I consider myself a professional Videos Gilrs (P.S: I do): what type of videos is I doing professionalling at?

Ah, the exclamation point! Admittedly not the most versatile of all punctuation, but the exuberant little fellow has its time and place, and is certainly beloved by AvoidThisJob.

Let’s have a brief refresher, shall we?

Things Exclamation Points Suggest

Innocent enthusiasm!

Surprise!!!

Amazing deals!

YELLING!!!!

Danger!!

Things Exclamation Points Do NOT Suggest

Professionalism!

Maturity!

GRAVITAS!!!!!!

Sobriety!

Discretion!!

And so it probably seems self-evident that job listings (and, by extension, resumés and cover letters) are NOT a great place for the exclamation point to make its presence truly felt. And yet…

Um….yeah. OK. Soo….

….. a better question would be: who DOESN’T?!! This offer (so generous. SO generous!) combines every 18-24 year old girl’s favorite things: multiple exclamation points, bad grammar, money, and (obviously) the moist touch of a craigslist stranger.